Saturday, September 3, 2016

COUNTING THE COST

23rd Sunday in Ordinary time, Year C. Luke 14:25-33.

AIM: To examine the cost of discipleship, and to show that it can be paid only through complete trust in Jesus.

 

AIf anyone comes after me,@ Jesus tells us in the gospel reading we have just heard, Awithout hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.@ Is that good news? Can Jesus really be serious?

In speaking about Ahating@ those dearest to us, Jesus was using a Semitic word familiar to his hearers, but not to us. Hating for Jesus meant simply detaching one=s self from someone or something. What he was really saying is that He must come first. That is how Jesus himself lived. Even at age twelve Jesus was putting his love for his heavenly Father ahead of love for Mary and Joseph by staying behind in Jerusalem after his earthly parents had left. ADid you not know that I must be in my Father=s house?@ (Lk 2:49) Jesus asked them when they chided him for staying behind. Luke tells us that Athey did not understand what he said to them.@ But Jesus understood, though he was still a boy. 

Love for the Lord does not exclude other loves. But it puts them in the right order. God is not jealous. How could the One who is love, and who in creating us in his image has given us the ability to love, be jealous of what he has made? Jesus asks everything of us because he has given us everything. As Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians, AHe loved us and gave himself up for us@ (5:2).

Jesus spoke those words about hating those dearest to us, Luke tells us, to the Agreat crowds@ which were following him. Did they know how Jesus life would end? How could they? And if they had known, how many of them would have continued to follow him? Many, perhaps most, were following Jesus in a spirit of momentary enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is fine. But Jesus knew that it must have solid foundations. His words about total renunciation, and the two short parables which follow, were his attempt to supply those foundations.

AWhich of you wishing to construct a tower,@ Jesus begins, Adoes not first sit down and calculate the cost ...?@ The example was immediately intelligible to Jesus= hearers. It was the dream of every small farmer in Palestine in Jesus= day to have a proper tower on his property, rather than merely a shed. During harvest time he could sleep in the tower, keeping watch for trespassers and predatory animals, to insure himself against loss.

Valuable as such a tower might be, Jesus= hearers also knew that it would be folly to start building one without first calculating whether the available resources were sufficient to complete the job. If they were not, the farmer would have nothing to show for his hard work but some useless foundations. And his friends would laugh at him for his imprudence.

The second parable begins differently: not Awhich of you ...@, but Awhat king ...@ That too was easy to understand, even though none of Jesus= hearers were kings with an army at their disposal. Common to both parables is the sentence about sitting down first and counting the cost. The first step in any important undertaking, Jesus was saying, is not action, but reflection. Too often we act first and reflect later (if we reflect at all). The crowds who followed Jesus with so much enthusiasm had not reflected. When, finally, they did reflect, some of them would shout: ACrucify him, crucify him.@  

The other sayings of Jesus which Luke places before and after these two parables B about hating father and mother, and about renouncing all our possessions B describe the cost of discipleship. Following Jesus is not something we can do in our spare time. It cannot be simply one interest among others. Jesus Christ must come first in our lives.

Some years ago the internationally known American pianist, Van Cliburn, was asked by a television interviewer about the sacrifices needed to succeed in his profession. AWhen you decide to give your life to music,@ Cliburn replied, Ayou must never look back. You must simply say: >If I am not in music, there is nothing.=@ That is breathtaking. But it is also inspiring. Is it any different, at bottom, from the demand which Jesus makes when he tells us that he must mean more to us than family and possessions?

If you want to be my disciple, Jesus says, count the cost. First reflect. Then act. So let=s reflect. If following Jesus Christ really means putting him first B ahead of money, possessions, success, ahead of those we love most B if Christian discipleship means that, which of us could say with confidence that we had the necessary amount of self-denial and staying power?

Does that mean that we should not follow Jesus Christ? Of course not. It does mean, however, that we should never try to follow Jesus Christ in dependence on our own resources alone. That would mean certain failure. If today=s gospel is good news, it is because of what it does not say: that there are resources for Christian discipleship available to us which are adequate. What we could never achieve on our own, we can achieve if we depend not on our own strength, but on the strength that comes from God alone.   

That is why Jesus tells us in several places to become Alike little children.@  Little children are naturally dependent on others. It never occurs to them that they can make it on their own. As children grow, we encourage them to become more and more independent, and to take risks. That is fine in the things of this world.

In spiritual things, however, and hence in our relationship with God, we must unlearn that spirit of independence which, in worldly affairs, is the difference between maturity and childhood. When it comes to following Jesus Christ, we dare not trust in our own resources. If we do, we are like the farmer building his tower without calculating the cost; or like the king setting our recklessly on a military campaign against impossible odds.

Jesus never asks us to fight against impossible odds. He does not want us to build with inadequate resources. That is why he gives us his resources. They are always adequate. If we trust in the power which God alone can give us, we are safe. We can build with confidence. We can fight confident of victory.

We are gathered here around the Lord=s these twin tables of word and sacrament to receive that power which can do for us, and in us, what we can never do for ourselves. This power is not something impersonal, a kind of spiritual electricity, as if we were here to get our batteries charged for another week. The power that is offered to us here is a person. 

His name is Jesus Christ. 

 

 

Friday, September 2, 2016

ST. GREGORY THE GREAT


Homily for Sept. 3rd, 2015. St. Gregory the Great.

          St. Gregory the Great, the man whom we celebrate today, was born at Rome about 540 of a wealthy aristocratic family which had already given the Church two popes. It was a decaying and chaotic world. There was now no Emperor at Rome. The man who bore that title now ruled Italy from Constantinople. Thanks to his intelligence and family connections, Gregory soon attained high office in civil government. But he was unsatisfied. A conversion experience led him to become a monk in his mid-30s.

          Gregory always looked back on this period of his life as the happiest. It lasted only five years. In 579 the reigning Pope Benedict I summoned Gregory from his monastery, and over his protests ordained him one of the seven deacons of Rome, thus making him one of its top administrative officials. To Gregory’s further dismay, the following Pope Pelagius II soon sent him as papal envoy to the Emperor’s court in Constantinople, where he would remain for the next seven years. Recalled to Rome in 586, Gregory resumed living with his fellow monks, while fully occupied with administrative duties at the papal court.

When Pelagius died in 590, Gregory tried for months to avoid being chosen as his successor, but finally accepted the inevitable. He lived on for another 14 years, suffering often from ill health, but ceaselessly busy attending to the needs of the Church, and those of the city of Rome and the surrounding area as well. To raise the level of the Church’s bishops, he wrote his Pastoral Rule – an important work too little heeded in the centuries to come.

Convinced from his years as a monk of the importance of waiting upon God in silent prayer, Gregory stressed the foundation of such contemplative prayer: the virtue of humility. When the Patriarch of Constantinople saluted him in a letter as “Universal Pope,” Gregory protested that this grandiose title detracted from the honor due his fellow bishops – an early example of what we call today “collegiality.” The best example of Gregory’s humility is the title he originated, and which is still used today in official papal documents: “Servant of the servants of God.” We invoke his prayers for his successor today: Pope Francis. 

 

Thursday, September 1, 2016

GOD'S SERVANTS AND STEWARDS


Homily for Sept. 2nd, 2016: 1 Corinthians 4:1-5.

          “People should regard us,” Paul writes in our first reading, “as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” Living as servants and stewards is fundamental in Holy Scripture. We find it already in the second creation tale in Genesis, chapter two. The man whom God places in Eden is not its owner. The garden belongs to God. God places Adam in the garden “to till it and care for it.”  He is God’s agent, his steward, to tend the garden on behalf of its creator and owner. As long as Adam obeys the creator’s laws, he enjoys the garden’s abundant fruits. When he breaks God’s law, he is expelled from Eden – a symbol of the ordered, beautiful world of God’s making. In terms simple enough for a child to understand, the Genesis creation tale proclaims what the modern ecology movement has rediscovered: that there is a sacred order in nature. When we respect nature’s laws, we prosper. When we violate the natural order, we pay a price. We are creation’s stewards, accountable to God, our creator.

          We are stewards of all God’s gifts: our time, our talents, and treasure – the money and other possessions we have. These are gifts entrusted to us by God, for a limited time. One day we shall have to give an account to God of how we have used his gifts. Crucial to the right use of these gifts is gratitude to their giver, the Lord God. 

          Hebrew religion taught the offering of firstfruits.  The Jewish farmer and shepherd offered God the first fruits of field and flock, out of gratitude, in recognition that everything comes ultimately from God. Jesus, who learned this practice in childhood from his mother, from St. Joseph, and in the synagogue school at Nazareth, would be shocked to find many of his present-day followers offering God not the firstfruits but leavings: what is left over after they have provided themselves and their loved ones not only with necessities, and often with many luxuries besides.

          Show me someone who is deeply happy, and I’ll show you someone who puts God first -- in all areas of life: who gives the Lord God the first claim on his or her time, his or her talents (which means the skills and abilities we have developed by using the gifts God has given us). Such a person also puts God first financially, by giving Him not a tip but the first claim on his or her money and other possessions. There are such people here in our parish – and in every parish the world over. They are expressing their gratitude to God for all his bounty. And if a long life has taught me anything, it is this. Grateful people are happy people: no exceptions!

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

COUNTING THE COST


23rd Sunday in Ordinary time, Year C. Luke 14:25-33.

AIM: To examine the cost of discipleship, and to show that it can be paid only through complete trust in Jesus.

 

AIf anyone comes after me,@ Jesus tells us in the gospel reading we have just heard, Awithout hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.@ Is that good news? Can Jesus really be serious?

In speaking about Ahating@ those dearest to us, Jesus was using a Semitic word familiar to his hearers, but not to us. Hating for Jesus meant simply detaching one=s self from someone or something. What he was really saying is that He must come first. That is how Jesus himself lived. Even at age twelve Jesus was putting his love for his heavenly Father ahead of love for Mary and Joseph by staying behind in Jerusalem after his earthly parents had left. ADid you not know that I must be in my Father=s house?@ (Lk 2:49) Jesus asked them when they chided him for staying behind. Luke tells us that Athey did not understand what he said to them.@ But Jesus understood, though he was still a boy. 

Love for the Lord does not exclude other loves. But it puts them in the right order. God is not jealous. How could the One who is love, and who in creating us in his image has given us the ability to love, be jealous of what he has made? Jesus asks everything of us because he has given us everything. As Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians, AHe loved us and gave himself up for us@ (5:2).

Jesus spoke those words about hating those dearest to us, Luke tells us, to the Agreat crowds@ which were following him. Did they know how Jesus life would end? How could they? And if they had known, how many of them would have continued to follow him? Many, perhaps most, were following Jesus in a spirit of momentary enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is fine. But Jesus knew that it must have solid foundations. His words about total renunciation, and the two short parables which follow, were his attempt to supply those foundations.

AWhich of you wishing to construct a tower,@ Jesus begins, Adoes not first sit down and calculate the cost ...?@ The example was immediately intelligible to Jesus= hearers. It was the dream of every small farmer in Palestine in Jesus= day to have a proper tower on his property, rather than merely a shed. During harvest time he could sleep in the tower, keeping watch for trespassers and predatory animals, to insure himself against loss.

Valuable as such a tower might be, Jesus= hearers also knew that it would be folly to start building one without first calculating whether the available resources were sufficient to complete the job. If they were not, the farmer would have nothing to show for his hard work but some useless foundations. And his friends would laugh at him for his imprudence.

The second parable begins differently: not Awhich of you ...@, but Awhat king ...@ That too was easy to understand, even though none of Jesus= hearers were kings with an army at their disposal. Common to both parables is the sentence about sitting down first and counting the cost. The first step in any important undertaking, Jesus was saying, is not action, but reflection. Too often we act first and reflect later (if we reflect at all). The crowds who followed Jesus with so much enthusiasm had not reflected. When, finally, they did reflect, some of them would shout: ACrucify him, crucify him.@  

The other sayings of Jesus which Luke places before and after these two parables B about hating father and mother, and about renouncing all our possessions B describe the cost of discipleship. Following Jesus is not something we can do in our spare time. It cannot be simply one interest among others. Jesus Christ must come first in our lives.

Some years ago the internationally known American pianist, Van Cliburn, was asked by a television interviewer about the sacrifices needed to succeed in his profession. AWhen you decide to give your life to music,@ Cliburn replied, Ayou must never look back. You must simply say: >If I am not in music, there is nothing.=@ That is breathtaking. But it is also inspiring. Is it any different, at bottom, from the demand which Jesus makes when he tells us that he must mean more to us than family and possessions?

If you want to be my disciple, Jesus says, count the cost. First reflect. Then act. So let=s reflect. If following Jesus Christ really means putting him first B ahead of money, possessions, success, ahead of those we love most B if Christian discipleship means that, which of us could say with confidence that we had the necessary amount of self-denial and staying power?

Does that mean that we should not follow Jesus Christ? Of course not. It does mean, however, that we should never try to follow Jesus Christ in dependence on our own resources alone. That would mean certain failure. If today=s gospel is good news, it is because of what it does not say: that there are resources for Christian discipleship available to us which are adequate. What we could never achieve on our own, we can achieve if we depend not on our own strength, but on the strength that comes from God alone.   

That is why Jesus tells us in several places to become Alike little children.@  Little children are naturally dependent on others. It never occurs to them that they can make it on their own. As children grow, we encourage them to become more and more independent, and to take risks. That is fine in the things of this world.

In spiritual things, however, and hence in our relationship with God, we must unlearn that spirit of independence which, in worldly affairs, is the difference between maturity and childhood. When it comes to following Jesus Christ, we dare not trust in our own resources. If we do, we are like the farmer building his tower without calculating the cost; or like the king setting our recklessly on a military campaign against impossible odds.

Jesus never asks us to fight against impossible odds. He does not want us to build with inadequate resources. That is why he gives us his resources. They are always adequate. If we trust in the power which God alone can give us, we are safe. We can build with confidence. We can fight confident of victory.

We are gathered here around these twin tables of word and sacrament to receive that power which can do for us, and in us, what we can never do for ourselves. This power is not something impersonal, a kind of spiritual electricity, as if we were here to get our batteries charged for another week. The power that is offered to us here is a person. 

His name is Jesus Christ. 

 

 

"PUT OUT INTO DEEP WATER."


Homily for Sept. 1st, 2016: Luke 5:1-11.

After a discouraging night of toil on the lake, the net coming back empty time after time, until Peter and his companions were bone weary, Jesus tells Peter to try again in broad daylight. Peter knew that would be an exercise in futility: “Master, we have worked all night, and taken nothing.” But then, perhaps just to humor the Lord, Peter adds: ABut at your command I will lower the nets.@ Peter=s willingness to do the unthinkable enables him to experience the impossible. No sooner have they started to pull in the net, than they feel it heavy with fish.

Throwing himself at the feet of Jesus, with the fish flopping all around him in the boat, Peter can only blurt out: ADepart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.@ To which Jesus responds with words of reassurance: ADo not be afraid: from now on you will be catching men.@ In that moment, Peter=s life is changed. AThey brought their boats to shore,@ Luke tells us, Athey left everything and followed [Jesus].@ Peter never forgot it.

APut out into the deep water,@ the Lord told Peter. He is saying the same to each one of us right now. Do not abandon the quest, though it seems fruitless. Leave the shallow waters near shore. Forsake what is familiar and secure for the challenge of the unknown deep. Dare, like Peter, to do the unthinkable. Then, like him, you too will experience the impossible. 

                   As we travel life=s way, with all its twistings and turnings, its many small achievements and frequent defeats, we who in baptism have become sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ should be sharpening our spiritual vision. For it is only with the eyes of faith that we can perceive the unseen, spiritual world all round us: beneath, behind, above this world of sense and time. Faith assures us that God is watching over us always, in good times and in bad. The same Lord who challenged Peter, devastated by failure at the one thing he thought he knew something about, to APut out into deep water.@

Glimpsing this mighty God, our loving heavenly Father, with the eyes of faith, we too join B as in a moment we shall B in the angels= song:  AHoly, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!  All the earth is filled with his glory!@   

 

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

"HE WENT TO A DESERTED PLACE."



          In Jesus’ world illness of various kinds was due, people thought, to possession by demons. Today’s gospel portrays Jesus as one who has power over these supernatural forces of evil. He “rebukes” them.  

Jesus too comes from the supernatural world. As God’s Son, however, Jesus has power over the evil forces in that supernatural world. That is why Luke, the gospel writer, tells us that Jesus “rebukes” the supernatural forces of evil. He rebukes the life-threatening fever which has laid Peter’s mother-in-law low. And he rebukes the demons in the many people who are brought to him for healing. Luke’s language shows that he is describing what we today call “exorcisms.” Freed from demonic possession, these people are healed at once. There is no period of convalescence. Peter’s mother-in-law, we heard, “got up immediately and waited on them.” Her healing helps explain Peter’s willingness, reported in the next chapter of Luke’s gospel, immediately to leave his work as a fisherman in order to follow Jesus.

          The demons leave the other people whom Jesus heals, shouting, “You are the Son of God.” Unlike the many who witnessed Jesus’ healing and refused to believe in him, these evil inhabitants of the supernatural world recognize Jesus as a fellow inhabitant of that world – though unlike them a good one. Jesus rebukes them and does not allow them to speak, we heard, “because they knew he was the Christ”: the long awaited anointed servant and Son of God. Jesus did not want to acquire the reputation of a sensational wonder-worker. He was that, but he was so much more.

          Especially significant is the information that at daybreak, “Jesus went to a deserted place.” Why? He needed to be alone with his heavenly Father. If Jesus, whose inner resources were incomparably greater than ours, needed those times alone with the Lord, we are fools, and guilty fools, if we think we can make it in reliance on our own resources alone.
         That’s why we are here. To receive all the goodness, love, purity, and power of Jesus – our elder brother, our lover, and our best friend; but also our divine savior and redeemer. And when we have him, we have everything. 

Monday, August 29, 2016

"THEY WERE ASTONISHED AT HIS TEACHING."


Homily for August 30th, 2016: Luke 4:31-37.

          “Jesus taught them on the Sabbath,” we heard in the gospel, “and they were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority.” And a few verses later Luke, the gospel writer, tells us that following a dramatic healing, “they were all amazed and said to one another, ‘What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.’”

          The people who hear Jesus realize that he speaks “with authority.” What does that mean? It means that he spoke differently from the other religious teachers they were accustomed to hearing. Those teachers interpreted God’s law. Jesus spoke not as an interpreter of God’s law, but as the law-giver. Read the last part of chapter 5 in Matthew’s gospel, for instance, and you will find Jesus citing one Commandment after another, and then saying: “But I say unto you.” After citing the Commandment which prohibits murder, for instance, Jesus says that it applies not only to killing another, but even to the emotion which leads to killing: anger. (Cf. Mt. 5:21-23)  Citing the Commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” Jesus says that it applies even to lustful thoughts. (Mt. 5:27f.)

          The people who hear Jesus are also amazed that he has power to heal people with a mere word. The man whom Jesus heals in today’s gospel is possessed, Luke tells us, “with the spirit of an unclean demon.” In a pre-scientific age without blood tests, microscopes, or X-rays, that was the normal way to explain illness. The demon throws the man down and at Jesus’ word comes out of him, “without doing him any harm.”

          Jesus still speaks to us today: in Holy Scripture, in the teaching of his divinely commissioned Church, and in the still, small voice of conscience. His word still has power to convict people of sin, changing their lives, and setting them on the right path – to Him. When people pray to Him and listen to his words, there are still miraculous healings which no doctor can explain.

“Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus says, “my words will never pass away” (Mt. 24:35 NEB). How better could we respond than with the familiar prayer: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

Sunday, August 28, 2016

"THE ONE WHO HUMBLES HIMSELF WILL BE EXALTED."


22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C. Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29; Luke 14:1, 7-14.
AIM: To explain humility and instill a desire for it.
 
Some American tourists were visiting the house of the German composer Ludwig von Beethoven in Bonn. A young woman who was proud of her musical abilities sat down at the composer=s piano and played Beethoven=s Moonlight Sonata. When she had finished, she said to the custodian: AI expect you see a great many musicians here.@ AYes, we do,@ he replied. AThe American pianist Van Kliburn was here only last week.@ ADid he play on Beethoven=s piano?@ the young woman asked. ANo, he said he wasn=t worthy.@           
Truly great people are humble. AConduct your affairs with humility,@ we heard in our first reading. And in the gospel we heard Jesus saying the same: AEveryone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.@
Are we really comfortable with humility? Don=t we suspect that there is something phony about it? That humility means striking a pose, pretending to be less than we really are? Let=s look again at the gospel.
Jesus offers shrewd advice to the person who wants to get ahead in society. When you are invited to a banquet, he says, don=t head straight for the head table. You might be asked to give up your place for someone more important. That would be embarrassing. Take your place far away from the head table. There you don=t risk being pushed aside. And if you=re lucky, your host will ask you to move up to a better place, where everyone can see what good connections you have. 
In reality, Jesus gave this shrewd advice Atongue in cheek.@ Can we imagine that Jesus cared where he sat at table? If there is one thing Jesus definitely was not, it was a snob. By seeming to take seriously the scramble for social success, Jesus was actually making fun of it. He was showing up snobbery for the empty and tacky affair it always is.
But Jesus= words have a deeper meaning. This is clear from his opening words: AWhen you are invited to a wedding banquet.@ A wedding banquet is a familiar image in the Bible. Israel=s prophets speak often of God inviting his people to a wedding banquet. That was the prophets= way of saying that their people=s sins would not always estrange them from the all-holy God. There would come a time when God would take away sins, so that his people could enjoy fellowship with the one who had created them and still loved them.
  Jesus came to fulfill what the prophets had promised. He told people that the wedding banquet was ready. Now was the time to put on the best clothes, he said, and come to the feast. Some of the most religious people in Jesus= day, the Pharisees, were confident that the best seats at God=s banquet were reserved for them. Hadn=t they earned those places by their zealous observance of every detail of God=s law? Jesus= seemingly shrewd advice about how to be a success in society was a rebuke to those who assumed that the best seats at God=s banquet were reserved for them. Jesus was warning them that they were in for a surprise, and that it would be unpleasant.
In the second part of today=s gospel Jesus expands this warning. When you are giving a dinner yourselves, he says, don=t invite socially prominent people who can repay you with return invitations, and whose presence at your table feeds your self-esteem. Instead invite people who cannot repay you, and whose presence in your house will not enhance your reputation in society. Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees for associating only with the upright and respectable Apillars of society.@ Jesus invited everyone to the banquet, especially Athe poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.@  His preference for such people earned him the rebuke of the upright and respectable: AThis man receives sinners, and eats with them@ (Luke 15:2). Here, as in the first part of today=s gospel, Jesus, while seeming to give advice about how to behave in society, is really talking about our relationship with God. The measure of our acceptance by God, Jesus warns, is our willingness to accept people we find unsympathetic, uncongenial, not Aour kind.@
That is humility: not bothering where we sit at the banquet; not trying to be seen only with the right people; being willing to be overlooked, to associate with people who can do nothing for us, to be looked down on because of the company we keep B as Jesus was looked down on by respectable people in his day for the company he kept. 
Humility is not a pose. It is not phony. Humility does not mean the beautiful woman pretending she is ugly, or the clever man pretending he is stupid. Humility means recognizing our talents and achievements for what they are: things given to us by God out of sheer goodness; things for which we can take little credit or none, but which impose on us a responsibility B as Jesus reminded us when he said: AWhen much has been given a person, much will be expected of him@ (Luke 12:48).
When we come to the end of life=s journey, and stand before the Lord who gave us every one of our talents, and who made possible every one of our achievements, how unimportant and insignificant even our greatest accomplishments will seem. That is why we say at every Mass: ALord, I am not worthy ...@ Before Him who has given us all we are and have, sin excepted, we are always unworthy. When we have done everything God commands (and which of us has?), we are still not worthy of all the love that God lavishes on us. God=s gifts to us always exceed what we deserve, on any strict accounting.  

Humility never means pretending we are less than we are. Humility means recognizing that even our greatest achievements are an insignificant and inadequate return for all that God has given us. >Come to God in that spirit of humility,= Jesus says, >and you will be overwhelmed by his generosity. But come to God appealing to what you deserve, claiming the best seats at banquet because you have earned them B and you will get what you deserve. God is not unfair. When you discover, however, how little you deserve, you may be shocked.=  

Suppose, on the other hand, that we decide simply to forget about what we deserve. Suppose the lowest place at the banquet is just as acceptable as the place of honor B as it was for Jesus. Suppose that we appeal not to what we deserve, but to God=s generosity. Then B if we do that B we shall have achieved something infinitely more important than the things of which we are most proud. For then we shall have attained humility.

Humility means being empty before God. And it is only the person who is empty whom God can fill with his joy, his love, and his peace.